Guardian: Darkness Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

table,
surprised gasps came from his friends.
    “ What’s this about,
James?” Bella said. “Did something happen to the book?”
    “ Well...” James
scratched his neck. How was he going to bring this carefully? “Yes.
They released Lunaria’s magic upon themselves, and now they’ll be
joining us on our journey to Lunaria.” He looked at his friends; as
much as they’d changed over the thirty years the five adults had
known each other, one thing that had never changed, were their
expressions.
    There was Samira,
James’s sister, curvy and short, her hair short and blonde, her
blue eyes questioning. Thomas, her husband, still had a British
accent, but now also strong shoulders. His hair was the same brown
mess as always. Antonio was still the broad-shouldered, muscular
blond guy he’d always been, his green eyes peering unbelievingly
from behind his glasses. And then there was Bella, who had hardly
changed; her body was petite, her eyes blue, and her hair dark.
Lucy, despite being his cousin, somewhat resembled James; her red
hair was up in a messy ponytail, and her dark blue eyes were
worried.
    “ Wait,” Samira said, while leaning forward toward her
brother, as if she couldn’t believe her ears – which was probably
true, “ What ? We’re
going back to Lunaria?”
    “ You’re kidding , right?”
Thomas said, scratching his brown beard. “There’s no reason for us
to go back there. The Master’s dead, the light is back, the Spirits
rule again. We can’t do anything more than that.”
    James leaned back on
the couch, crossing his arms. “So thought I,” he said. “But it
turns out that there’s a chance the Master might come back if he
repossesses his body. The Spirits require our assistance to prevent
that from happening.”
    “ Alright, point taken,” Thomas said. “There is more we can do. But how are we supposed to help with that?
We hardly managed to defeat him! If it hadn’t been for Sabrina, we
would’ve been toast!”
    “ That’s true,”
Antonio said. He’d been disinterestedly cleaning his glasses the
whole time, as if he didn’t care that he was going to have to put
his life on the line once again. “But we’re twenty-five years older
now. We’re not a bunch of stupid kids anymore.”
    “ You’re turning forty-five in February,” Bella said smugly.
“I don’t know who’s got more strength and agility, a
nineteen-year-old or a forty-five-year-old, but I’d say the
nineteen-year-old does have some advantage
there...”
    Antonio responded
with a grunt. “Just shut up, Bella,” he said. “I know I’m not what I used to be, but I can still be at
least as strong as I used to be. For a while, at
least...” His voice quickly died out to a grumpy grumbling
sound.
    James leaned forward, placing his
elbows on his knees. “Guys,” James said, “you know the drill. Just
go to sleep tonight, and we’ll be on our way.”
    Lucy ran a confused
hand through her long, dark red hair. “And you’re sure there’s no
way out of this?” she said. “You’re absolutely sure that you guys
and your kids will have to go back there, for - who knows how long?”
    James rolled his eyes, yet it
wasn’t a roll of annoyance. He was acknowledging his displeasure
with the fact that there was no way out. “Trust me, if there
would’ve been a way out of this, I wouldn’t have called in this
meeting in the first place,” he said tiredly. “There’s absolutely
no way out. Believe me, I checked with Akilah. More than
once.”
    Antonio fell backward
into the chair he was sitting on, grabbing his head with both his
hands. “Wow, man,” he sighed. “Just - wow .”
    “ And our kids know about all of
this already?” Thomas said; confusion reflected in his grey eyes.
“How – how did this happen? How – and why – and what did you tell them?”
    “ I told them
carefully, without trying to scare them,” James summed up the
answers to Thomas’s questions, “I told them because the